Competition Judges

Barry Wienman, DragonBridge Capital
Barry Weinman has been making high technology venture capital investments since 1980, mostly in Silicon Valley. He is Chairman of DragonBridge Capital, co-founder and Managing Director of Allegis Capital, and a General Partner of AVI Management Partners. Barry and his partners have helped 73 companies go through the IPO process. He has led investments in Palm Computer (NASDAQ), Cypress Semiconductor (NYSE), Caere (NASDAQ), Cadnetix (NASDAQ), ZOMA (NASDAQ), Columbia/HCA (NYSE), Women.com (NASDAQ), BE. Inc. (NASDAQ), Quokka (NASDAQ), LiveWorld (NASDAQ), InfoGear (CISCO), and Hyperparallel (YAHOO). He has served on the Board of Directors of many of these companies through their liquidity events and currently is on the Board of AaaHaa Media in Guangzhou, China and Hoana Medical in Hawaii.

Po Chi Wu, Dragon Bridge Capital
Po Chi Wu, Ph.D. is a 20-year veteran international venture capitalist who has invested in several companies which eventually grew into billion-dollar enterprises. He is currently Managing Director of DBC Merchant Bank, and a Special Advisor to the Guangzhou Municipal Government. Dr. Wu was previously President and co-founder of Allegro Capital, a venture fund in Silicon Valley; a Vice President at Advent International, where he opened and headed the California office and was responsible for investments in Asia and in the U.S.; and Executive Vice President and co-founder of China Venture Management, a subsidiary of China Development Industrial Bank in Taiwan.

Some of Dr. Wu's investments that became public companies have included: TiVo (NASDAQ), InfoGear (CSCO), CADMOS (Cadence Design Systems, NASDAQ), @Motion (Phone.com, NASDAQ), Genelabs Technologies (GNLB), Tait & Co. (Taiwan), Universal Scientific Industrial (Taiwan), Cascade Communications (NASDAQ), and Verifone (NASDAQ).

At the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Wu is a member of the Advisory Council of the Lawrence Hall of Science. For almost 10 years, he has been a guest lecturer for Engineering 110, "Venture Design - The Start-up Company." He is a former director and President of the Chinese Software Professionals Association (Silicon Valley), a trustee of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco Foundation, and a member of the Advisory Board of the Institute for Genetic Medicine at the University of Southern California.

Dr. Wu has a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Princeton University and a B.A. in mathematics and music from the University of California at Berkeley. He is fluent in Mandarin and French. His father, Professor Wu, Ta-You, was a highly respected theoretical physicist and educator in Taiwan and the People's Republic of China.

Gregory Kim, Vantage Counsel
Gregory Kim is a partner and founder of Vantage Counsel LLC, a Hawaii-based law company focused on building emerging companies and capital sources. Mr. Kim practices in the areas of corporate and securities laws, mergers & acquisitions, venture capital, joint ventures and licensing. Mr. Kim received a BS in engineering and applied sciences from Yale University in 1979 and a JD/MBA (emphasis in finance) from the University of California, Berkeley in 1983, where he was articles editor of the California Law Review. Mr. Kim started his legal career at the Bay Area firm of Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro (now Pillsbury Winthrop) in 1984, joined the Honolulu firm of Goodsill Anderson Quinn & Stifel in 1988, and launched Vantage Counsel LLC in October 2004. He is a founder, board member and executive officer of HiBEAM, an accelerator program for Hawaii emerging technology companies, and is a founding director of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Hawaii. Mr. Kim also served as the Chair of the Business Law Section of the Hawaii State Bar Association, and he created and chairs two subsections of the Bar Association-the Venture Lawyers Work Group, which focuses on creating the legal infrastructure to support startup and emerging growth companies, and the DCCA Work Group, which works closely with the Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs each year to formulate business-friendly legislation. Mr. Kim was the principal draftsperson of the Hawaii Business Corporation Act, and is also an editor-in-chief of the Corporations Law Manual, published by the Hawaii State Bar Association. Mr. Kim is recognized as a leading corporate attorney by Best Lawyers of America (www.bestlawyers.com), a leader in the field of corporate law by Chambers USA (www.chambersandpartners.com), and is "AV" rated by the legal publication Martindale-Hubbell (www.martindale.com).

Jason K. Lau
Born and raised in Hawaii, Jason Lau is a product of Punahou School and the University of California, Los Angeles, and has worked in the financial industry for such companies as Dean Witter Reynolds and Bank of Hawaii.

He is a founding partner of BJ Capital Management, BJM Partners, BJM Properties, and the Wo Private Equity Fund IV. He is also the Managing Partner of Lau Enterprises and TalkStory Productions, a Hawaii based film and TV production company. He is the Co-Executive Producer of the television series "Beyond the Break" and serves as President of Honowaii Investment Co., an industrial loan company.

He is on the board of directors of Hawaii Angels, an angel investment group, Hawaii Venture Capital Association (HVCA), and the Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF).

Competition Coaches

Eric Darmstaedter, ClearFuels Technology
Eric Darmstaedter is currently the CFO of ClearFuels, a startup in the cellulosic biomass-to-ethanol market. Mr. Darmstaedter serves on the Board of ClearFuels and Durafizz, a David Soane, nanotech startup company in the food and beverage markets. He was an early advisor during the startup of Nanopoint. His background is in the energy and environmental engineering business with 25 years at HEI Power Corp, Metcalf & Eddy, Research Cottrell and other energy related companies. Mr. Darmstaedter is a graduate of Cornell University in Engineering.

Brad Bertoch, The Wayne Brown Institute
Bradley B. Bertoch serves as President and a member of the Board of Trustees for the Wayne Brown Institute-a nonprofit nationally recognized educational organization dedicated to improving the human condition through entrepreneurship. He is a nationally recognized leader in equity backed business development, capital formation, and technology commercialization and entrepreneurship. Under his direction, the Institute has maintained the oldest and most successful venture accelerator program in the country while establishing close relationships with numerous venture capital firms; and developed the Investors Choice® Equity Capital Conferences (Utah, Hawaii, Alabama, New York), the Arizona Venture Capital Conference, the Los Angeles Technology Venture Forum, the Texas Venture Capital Conference, the Illinois Venture Capital Conference, Cooperative Venturing™ Educational Process, the Cooperative Venturing Network™, and has promoted the development and deployment of the Venture Ready® Report -- all models in technology commercialization. The results of these programs have been that over the last twenty years, 70% of the 600 companies participating in Institute programs have raised capital. In total, companies participating in an Institute venture conference have raised over $1.7 billion in private equity and created or retained over 30,000 high tech jobs throughout the United States.

Brad has spent the last 23 years in economic development focusing on homegrown, high-technology business development. In addition, his experience includes research park and incubator development; strategic planning consulting for SRI International and the BluePrint Team; and assistance in the validation of the New Venture TemplateÔ a set of analytical tools designed to improve new venture formation. He was the founding chairman of the National Business Incubator Assn. (NBIA) and co-founder and Board member of the Mountain West Venture Group. He is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Enterprise Development and a venture partner at Hamilton BioVentures a San Diego based $100 million life sciences venture fund. He is an honors graduate from the University of Utah, and received an MBA from Northwestern University.

John Chock, Hawaii Strategic Development Corporate
John A. Chock is the President of the Hawaii Strategic Development Corporation, leading the state's efforts to develop a venture capital industry to stimulate new business and technology growth. With investment commitments of $16 million, HSDC has helped launch ten venture capital limited partnerships, a venture capital fund of funds, and a China-focused merchant bank, leveraging some $600 million in equity financing from investors in Hawaii, the US mainland and Asia.

Prior to joining HSDC, he had business development, strategic planning, financial management, and international pricing responsibilities for a number of Hawaii-based subsidiaries of Fortune 500 corporations, including GTE, C. Brewer & Company, Inc., and Castle & Cooke, Inc.

Mr. Chock serves as a director of the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds and the Hawaii Venture Capital Association. He is a member of the executive advisory committees of University of Hawaii Connections program and Chaminade University's Hogan Entrepreneurial Program. A recipient of the Targeted Industries Growth Report (TIGR) award in 2000 and SBA's Financial Services Advocate of the Year in 2003, he received his A.B. degree from Brown University and MBA degree from the University of Hawaii.

Bill Spencer, Hawaii Venture Capital Association
Bill Spencer is a serial entrepreneur who has led the Hawaii Venture Capital Association since 1999. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His entrepreneurial ventures have pioneered software applications for server farm management, distributed communications, groupware computing and medical treatment management. Bill was a founding member of the Hawaii Ecotourism Association, is on the executive boards of UH Angels and the Hawaii Science and Technology Council, and has served HVCA since 1995.